Defining Hospitality

Dan Ryan: Today's guest has led rowing teams across the Atlantic, not once, but twice, and the Pacific Ocean once with the second time being the fastest ever recorded. He's a teacher at the London Business School, Columbia Business School, Wharton and Emery. He's the oth author of two books.

One of which I just finished reading a couple weeks ago called What If He's the Founder and c e O of Latitude, 35. Ladies and gentlemen, Jason Caldwell. Welcome Jason.

Jason Caldwell: Thanks, Dan. I'm looking forward to having a conversation with you. This will be great. Yeah.

Dan Ryan: So when people think about someone rowing across the ocean and doing all these other feats of endurance as you have, they don't necessarily think of hospitality.

And just to, I just want to bring the audience up to speed of where I encountered you for the first time. It was at the Hospitality Design Summit, um, in Lake Tahoe. You were there speaking and telling about one of these journeys I used to row in college. So when you first started talking about rowing and just the grueling physicality of it, I actually had like a panic attack.

I was like, oh my God, why is this guy speaking? What's going on? But then as you started talking, I. There were so many moments through your story that made me think of like the ultimate experience of hospitality because there was nothing, you were in the middle of the ocean, stripped down so bare bones, and there was this moment that just made me want to learn more.

So I just wanna say thank you for being here, and I'm so impressed by all of your, your feats and endurance and just kind of the, the, the, the course that you're plotting. And just

Jason Caldwell: thank you. Thanks. You know, I got, I've got a similar story. It's, you know, you came up to me after that talk that when we met each other, I'm thinking to myself, you know, these guys, I've got this, you know, podcast a little this, how do you speak on it?

Defining hospitality. I'm like, I can't help this guy out like this. This is, but then as we started to get to know each other, each other and have some conversations and I thought, wow, what a unique way to start talking about some of this stuff. And I've just found myself really looking forward to this conversation because you've.

Challenged me to start thinking about how I lead these teams. And, um, so I'm, what I'm excited about is that a lot of this conversation's gonna be kind of, I think I'm gonna be pioneering some of my thoughts. I'll be kind of at the fringe of my thought process here, and that's what's really kind of exciting about it.

So thank you. Oh,

Dan Ryan: great. And I, so I'm just so grateful as well. So as we get into it, and when I think of like hospitality, you know, there's hotels and restaurants and there's some sort of, you know, luxury and there's just, it's just, there's a whole level of comfort here. But what struck me about you and your experience was you're in the middle of the ocean.

There's really nothing You're eating, like dehydrated food. You're rowing for two hours on, two hours off for weeks and weeks and weeks at a time. And given that, how do you define hospitality?

Jason Caldwell: Yeah. You know, I'm mean when I think of hospitality, I'm speaking of from, from my experiences, uh, at hotels, at, at restaurants and that stuff.

And so I, I, I'm always as the person who's, who's being catered to. Um, but you know, for me, the definition of hospitality is really ways that I can create a level of comfort, whether that's a physical comfort, a mental comfort, or an emotional comfort, um, for people. And in my world, my people are my teammates and as leaders of, uh, as a leader of these teams that row across oceans and do all these extremely, uh, dangerous and endurance driven things and, and incredibly difficult, um, I have kind of the.

Burdened, but also the opportunity and privilege to find different ways that I could create that comfort. Um, you know, the obvious one is this physical comfort. I'll, we can talk about all three of those on, kinda let you drive that. But, but this idea of physical comfort right on, on a, on a, in a boat, which is very uncomfortable, but this, this emotional and mental comfort or almost like this, um, security or safety that teammates can have in you and the rest of the team and the boat and the equipment.

It's actually something that may be one of the most important aspects of, of, of kind of my leadership journey. So,

Dan Ryan: and when you think about the, or when we all fit, think about physical comfort and experiencing hospitality. Usually there's a comfortable bed. There might be a down comforter or at least clean sheets.

What you guys in the audience might not realize is basically a. Jason and his team are rowing across a fiberglass across the ocean in a fiberglass boat. I think it's about 10 meters long. There's four men full grown, like usually rowers are very tall. Walk us through how you're a, walk us through the physical environment, where you were and how you found comfort in that.

Jason Caldwell: Yeah, sure. Absolutely. So let's, yeah, let's set the stage a little bit what Ocean Row is, because I can't imagine too many people listening today are, are familiar with ocean rowing. So, um, As you heard Dan say, I've, I, I've wrote across the Atlantic twice. The second time, breaking the World Record is the fastest Steve ever row across the Atlantic.

That's a 3000 mile journey from essentially the off the coast of Northwest Africa, Southwest. So 3000 miles to the Caribbean. That's our first race, and I've done twice. And then just a few months ago, completed and broke the world's record run across the Pacific, which that race starts in San Francisco and goes right through the Golden Gay Bridge.

To Hawaii. Hawaii pt. So we're talking about, and that's 2,400 miles. So we're talking about large distances. So obviously we've got this discomfort because you are rowing thousands of miles and then you're in this boat, like you said, we've got a 30 foot boat, more or less, six feet at its widest. And you've got four big guys such as myself, not just Roman in this boat, but living in this boat.

You know, this is our home for the foreseeable future. Just so you know, the first time I ran across the Atlantic took us 51 days. The second time, which was the world record is 35 days. And this one here in the Pacific, uh, that we broke the world's record and was 30 days. So we're talking about a month or well over a month of not just rowing living.

And how that rowing and living, uh, kind of is, is dissected, is that, um, for teams like us that are trying to, you know, win races and break world records, you've gotta keep that boat moving at all times. So, so we've got four people on this team and two people are rowing while the other two people are resting inside these very tiny, tiny coffin like cabins.

And you're rowing two hours on, two hours off, 24 hours a day throughout the entire crops. So you as an individual are responsible for a minimum of. You know, 12 hours of rowing a day, and that's if everything's going well and you are doing that for an extended period of time. And, you know, just to give other context, because I sometimes incorrectly assume that people know what I do.

Um, there's no boat following us. We've got everything that we need. We're desalinating sea water for our drinking water pack all of our food, which to your point Dan, is 75% dehydrated meals. It's kind of like, you know, just not necessarily that nutritious stuff. Um, you've got, uh, you know, you've got all of your lifesaving equipment on board, such as like your, your SAT phones, your BHF radio, your chart plots, all these kinds of things are gonna help you get to the finish line, um, safely.

And all that stuff is being packed onto this boat. So while you are rowing 12 hours a day, which is in itself very, very difficult sometimes, The 12 hours that you're not rowing, that means 12 hours of simply existing could be the hardest, 12 the hardest hours of the entire cross scene. Um, you've got responsibilities when you're not rowing, right?

Taking care of your own body and obviously eating, drinking enough, and then, and then getting sleep. But you've also got responsibilities to the boat. You've gotta fix things that are broken, which inevitably happen all the time, cuz salts being introduced to everything. Um, you've gotta keep things clean, you know, to, to sta 'em off infection.

And then you've got responsibilities to your teammates. And this is where we're kind of getting into this idea of, of, of creating comfortable environments in a very uncomfortable world that we're in. And that's for those responsibilities, like picking up an extra ship for a teammate that's extremely seasick, or helping them get down food and water, making food for other people.

When you've got. The jet boiling stuff already out. So you're trying to be more efficient with your cooking and so you're cooking for other people, um, you know, going through the MET kit and getting stuff that somebody might need who's very sick or means injured or something like that. So you've got responsibilities to yourselves, responsibilities to the boat and responsibilities to your teammates, all in those two hour little segments that really you, all you want to do, to be fair, is to be selfish, eat and sleep, but you have got so much more to do.

So hopefully well, I wanna help a little bit.

Dan Ryan: Yeah. I wanna, I want to clarify something for the audience also, because, you know, Jason had mentioned that he, it's four people rowing, two hours on, two hours off. But in the story that he told me, two guy, one guy left the boat, one guy got really, oh, two guys left the boat.

So they got, one, got really sick, the other one just had like a mental freak out. So there was really only two of them. And they were rowing for a time. And then at one point that you, your tempers were flaring, but then, What struck me, and you wrote this in the book, and I don't remember you saying this, um, in the, in your talk that you were giving, but you said, and I I wanted you to tell the story here because you said in those 10 minutes, Tom, the other guy rowing with you, he was preparing a meal.

He asked you what you wanted and what this, what you said. What this small team needed more than anything else was community, and that's really where I, this lightning bolt went off of like, oh my God, this is the most uncomfortable thing in the world, but you created this community and then your performance improved.

Your, your, your, the, your outlook on life improved and you just, you performed and you started passing other boats. So tell us about that. That's crazy.

Jason Caldwell: Yeah. This is where you really helped challenge me to kind of define this idea of how we were, as you said, creating, creating a community in it. You know, looking at through this lens of hospitality, using that word as such an interesting way.

And since we've talked about it, it's just been fun. So this is the scenario that happened and you heard, you know, this is, we're talking about the first ocean crossing I did. This is back in 20, uh, 15. This is the row that went in many ways so wrong. You know, we're trying to win this race. We're trying to break a world's record.

You know, we're trying to do it in 30 days or less. We do it in 51 days. Two of our teammates get evacuated due to illness and injury. And one guy just straight up quit. So, so, you know, ha 600 miles in a 3000 mile road. One guy, he so ve is evacuated out to a sailboat because he's in dire, in dire need of, of iv, can't keep anything down.

Another one of our teammates just says, look, I'm taking, I'm gonna pull the rip record on this thing. I'm gonna take the opportunity cuz there's a sale work here. I'm, I'm done, I'm gone. So you've got, you've got two guys leaving. So it's myself and my remaining teammate, Tom. And you know, we're, we're, we're 600 miles into this 3000 mile race.

We're al we're also working 24th out of 20 16, 20, 20 fourth, third to last place. I mean, you know, nobody who's watching this, this race. And by the way, you can follow it on a smartphone. There's an app for it, but nobody who's following it on this app thinks that we're even gonna finish. Like, this is just a foregone conclusion that these guys are going to have to quit at some point too.

It'd have to be rescued at sea. So this leaves Tom and I with this unique challenge of like, are we, like, what are we trying to do here? We're a two man team and a boat mate for four or five people getting manhandled. And of course to make things worse within the first few days, bus now rowing just by ourselves, just the two of us, and have, and have done way too big a hurricane.

Smashes into the Caribbean and is moving kind of northeast and the outskirts of which is affecting us. So we're talking about tropical storm type conditions, which is in that big of a deal if you're driving to and from work, but certainly is when you're on a 30 foot rowboat in the middle of the Piic Atlantic Ocean.

So we're seeing these huge walls of water, these huge waves that were literally going up and, and surfing down at times. I mean, it's scary stuff and it's what we spend like the first kind of three days, and by the way, we're still doing two hours on, two hours off, except for. The two hours that you're spent rowing, you're by yourself while the other guy's in the cabin resting.

So you're literally, it's all this solitude. So, and, and it's the antithesis of hospitality at this point. Like, you, you're alone, you're scared, you're hungry, you, you're tired, you're miserable, you're absolutely miserable. And we, we deal with that for about three days. Just this two hours on, two hours off on the deck, just getting pounded by the storm waves hitting you salt sores everywhere.

And after about three days of that, I'm not, you know, to be fair, I'm, I'm done. Like, I, I honestly wish I would've quit. And I'm a pretty tenacious athlete and like, not a lot makes me think about quitting, but I, I'm at my lowest point in my, in my life, like, let alone just this race. You know, we're probably 10 days into this thing at this point, and, uh, and about four days of just me and Tom.

And so I'm kind of, I've got this last, I've got this 6:00 AM to 8:00 AM shift. And I'm just, it's like two minutes until my shift's over where then I'm just miserable. I've got my foul weather gear on and I'm just trying to Roan like if you know, the cabin door behind me kind of creeped open. And, uh, and you know, it's Tom kind of getting ready for his shift.

And, um, up to this point, essentially we have been like kind of ships passing each other in the night. Every two hours we spend a couple minutes in each other's company. That's it. The guy coming off the rowing shift and say things like practical things like, Hey, try to keep the bearing between two 60 and 2 65 and you know, it's Ray passed over you the first 45 minutes.

Looks like it's okay now bring your foul weather gear out, this and that. Just practical stuff. And then the guy coming on ship, the guy that's about to row, would kind of offer these words of empathy. Just kind of our, kind of our little routine that we had just hang in there, great job, like go get some rest kind of thing.

So when you're two guys in this desperate situation, like that's what you're clinging onto, you're kind of clinging onto these words of empathy. So as I'm about to come up this shift in the early morning here, I'm, I'm kind of looking forward to. Hearing Tom's, you know, kinda words of, of empathy, so to speak.

And in that moment, what he chooses to say, and that probably wasn't planned or anything, but he just says like, you know, Hey, what, what, what do you want for breakfast? And I just thought this to be such at the time at at ins like, uh, insensitive comments. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm here. I'm, I'm not my Lois, I'm, I'm a shell of my former self.

We've got, we've still got, you know, thousands of miles to go and this guy is just asking me what I want for breakfast. And I just thought it was so sensitive at first. And I was about to kind of turn around behind me and like yelling for this comment. But before I do, at that moment, I was like, yeah, I'm actually pretty hungry.

I'm starving over the course of that crazy night of that storm. I had an eat beat thing. You know, I, maybe just a handful of nuts or something like that. So instead of saying something, I probably would've. Regret it later on. I, I, I, I turn around, I say, you know, well, I would, I'll take the chicken risotto, which is just the freeze dried meal that I happen to, like, I still do actually.

It's pretty good. Um, and then he kind of just, you know, he kind of goes along with it, says, well, I would have the spaghetti bowling news, which is one of his mules that he likes. So, um, so, and then he kind of follows up and says like, do you want me to make you some coffee? And I'm just thinking like, yeah, of course.

And then he says, do you want me to, you know, sprinkle that powdered hazelnut creamer in it and stuff that you like? I was like, yeah, this is the best part. What are we talking about? So in this moment, he makes a deal of me, he says, look, I'll tell you what, if you row an extra 10 minutes, which you know has not longed on me, that, that's 10 minutes of your shift, I will make, make you breakfast.

And then you don't have to worry about it, you know, and you could just get off your shift, eat it, and go to sleep. Now he knows that that's asking a lot of me. But one of the things that him and I had gotten to know about each other is that, see, I would much rather put the muscle into the row where he likes the cooking at me.

He likes the task of cooking. He'd do that, rather do that than Roe. I'm a much bigger guy than him. He was already losing a ton of weight. He was getting, he was, you know, he's, I was already getting a little nerds on how much weight he lost. So we make the deal and after he finishes, we just literally, without any hope or agenda, I just stop rowing and like kind of pull the ORs in.

So we're not moving, we're actually not making progress anymore. And I turn around in my seat and I face him and we just kind of sit and we just eat breakfast together again. Like we didn't plan it. We've never done this before. It's just, he made the food for both of us. I need to eat. I'm starving. He needs to eat too.

So we might as well just eat together. And so we do. And like for 30 minutes we just kind of like, we share time together. We just have. We have a meal together. That's what it was. It was breakfast, just the two of us. And we hadn't seen each other essentially in three days, you know? So if you could imagine like just almost not talking to anybody for three straight days.

I mean, that type of solitude's just not something we're used to. And so we find ourselves, like I'm telling 'em about my night. I said, I'm flying, you not flying fishing in the face last night, if you can believe it. Like, and, and, and he's kind of sharing his stories and, and before we knew it, like, you know, 30 minutes had gone by quite quickly.

And you know, we, we said learn. So we finished our meal, we started to go back into our two hours onto our ship. But the, the change that took place after that moment was huge. It wasn't, it was sun loose. It was that there was a glacial like shift in. The, the, the, the composition of our, of our team of two now.

But it was so, it was so palpable. And the first thing that happened really was that we started going faster. So like most people didn't even think we'd finished this race. But over the course of the next 41 days Out to sea, we moved from 24th place. Man, no one thinks we're gonna finish all the way up to 11th place.

And not only finishing, but setting American Record is the fastest American four man team to ever row across. Cuz we started as a four. So we had to end as a four, categorized as a four. And the other thing that happened is that every single morning at 8:00 AM we had breakfast together and I wrote a little longer on that shift.

We cooked a little more and we just did exactly that. We pulled the oars in and we didn't worry that we weren't making progress towards the finish line while other people out there were. And we sat there and we had this meal together and we were. To your point, we were ha we were creating this community.

And I think the biggest shift, if I could just, if I could pinpoint it, was that, you know, before that first breakfast, we were scared of everything. We were scared of the ocean, we were scared of failure, we were scared of dying. And after that first breakfast, it was, we were more scared of letting each other down than we were of anything else.

And that was the biggest shit that took place on the boat. Every hour that I was rowing, leading up to our next breakfast, I was afraid of letting Tom down. I was rowing as hard as I could, not as hard as I thought I could, which is a difference. And he was doing the same. And this idea of, I, like, we kind of leveraged each other's human emotion was that, that was, to me, the, the real, the real recipe to our success and.

From that finish on, I've now gone on to row two more oceans, the Atlantic, again, break a world record the Pacific this year broke the world record. I've trekked through the oldest desert in the world. I've rode from Spain to the bs. I've done all these big, big adventures, small adventures throughout since that that th six years ago.

But from that moment on that sense of building community, and if we want to break it into this idea of hospitality has not only never left, it never been too far from how I built and train and lead teams. It's become kind of a cornerstone of how we do this stuff. So anyway, I wanna, no,

Dan Ryan: I wanted to. So it's really just a metaphor for life as well, I think, because we all go through just getting through the day, doing our thing, and it's oftentimes, for me anyway, I need to have and schedule in these.

Moments of mindfulness and just reflection and just being self-aware, and you basically created a mindful moment in the middle of a hellish experience, drowning in fear, and you leveraged your emotion to create this pause, if you will. Yeah. So what I'm curious, and that pause created this idea of community or you strengthened your idea of community.

How are you, how have you taken that idea of that pause and that mindful moment into all of your other endeavors?

Jason Caldwell: Yeah. You know, you call a Apollos, and I actually have a, a phrase for it now, as I call it a gathering point. It's a, they're gathering points, they're opportunities that we are given to realign ourselves, both with our, kind of our North star, but also with our team's purpose and mission statement.

And that's all it is. To be fair. It's an opportunity that you can choose to take or not to take. And that's something that has really stuck with me as I build the teams in the future, is that I believe that as a leader, you've gotta create as many of those gallery points, as many of those opportunities to help your team realign with themselves as you can.

Now, you won't. And some of them are very formal, like, Hey, we're gonna have this breakfast moment. You know, I mean, we don't, I don't do that with my other team. We have our, it is organically grown into whatever that team is gonna do. Some are as formal as we're gonna stop and pause and have this, and sometimes it's as informal as just taking a second to ask the teammate a question that.

You didn't normally wouldn't have time to ask 'em or didn't think you have time to ask or just to check in with somebody, just see how they're doing. So if you ask, if you're asking what I've done, bringing it forward is that's what I've done as a leader. The very least thing I can do as the leader of these teams is to create opportunities for that alignment to take place in that kind of leveraging it human emotion to start to build up.

It's a, it's a community thing. So, you know, I I, it, it works in different ways. We have at 10:00 AM on this last row, every morning at 10:00 AM even if you weren't rowing, the other two guys had to pop out. And we have a check-in with everybody and everybody on, in the middle of the ocean when there's a lot going on.

I didn't care what was happening. You everyone got out there from 10 to 10, 10 everyone got a chance to say, this is how I'm feeling. This is, and I'm asking you for this, you know, for this favor, or I, I need help with this. And it was powerful.

Dan Ryan: Speaking about that 10 minutes, one of the. People that really changed the way I, I run, I run businesses.

This guy Vern Harnish, he created this entrepreneur's organization I'm involved in. He wrote this book called Rockefeller Habits. And within that, one of the most important thing that Rockefeller did with his number two is they had a daily huddle. And really it was like a, they had lunch, but oftentimes, like in my company, it's, you know, we have a 12 minute thing, Hey, what are you up to?

What are your metrics? Where are you stuck? Share a value story about someone else and then a one word closed. But oftentimes I find that just sh someone sharing where they're stuck as a leader, you're like, oh, I can help you solve that really easily. And it's being, creating that moment of vulnerability has been really powerful for me and just a good way to always keep in sync.

And when you think of the, where you call it a gathering point, I'm curious, um, do you have any examples of when you've introduced this gathering point to your clients or your teams? What are some of the. Measurable improvements that you've seen?

Jason Caldwell: Yeah, I mean, that's a great question. I think one, one of the things that does the best at is it builds trust.

And while these types of kind of emotionally driven metrics are difficult to actually measure, you know, as a teen, whether trust is being built, built or if, if it's deteriorating and, and I think one of these check-ins are making people feel as though Jason cares about me, cares about what my goals are.

We obviously have a group and team organizational. Goal or path, but he cares that my personal goals are also being met at the same time. And so I think that that is, that, that trust enables, and it's a selfish thing too, for me to do. If my people trust me, then they will tell me the truth when they need stuff, when things aren't going well, if they don't trust me, they won't.

That's just human beings at our most basic level. The other thing I think that it's really important to, to consider when we're talking about these gathering points is this idea that it can't just be lip service. You're paying too. You know, you can't just say, oh, we do this every day. Okay, let's go through it.

It, it, it, it can't be a box that you checked. Did we do, did we do the group check-in? Save? Okay, good. That's good. Oh, we did do it now we'll just do it tomorrow then. It can't be that it has to be emotionally led, emotionally driven, and authentic else. People will not. Treat it with the gravitas that it deserves and that it needs in order to be effective.

I once

Dan Ryan: Good. Well wait to, to build on that one. When we share a, we have these very specific core values and when we share a core value story about someone else on the team or a client or just anything else, it also introduces that it's not just checking a box. You really have to think and tap into your emotion.

So you tell something about whether you're caring, how did they adapt and improve? Um, how are they tenacious? How are they organized? Or how did they do what they say, do what they said and said what they meant. So in a way, you're checking a box by doing it. Yes. But to make it more feeling and caring based.

How do you do that in the middle of the ocean?

Jason Caldwell: That's what's difficult. And that's where, you know, going in and building the team full of the right people, not just the best people, is something that I'm always trying to, constant challenge. And something I'm always looking for is like, Look lap 30 fives racing teams now have some notoriety.

We get a lot of people that wanna be part of these teams because they're highly organized. We're doing exciting things. We've got all this legacy behind us. They're well funded, you know, all this type of stuff. But, you know, it's easy to just pull the biggest, strongest athletes out of the hat and just say, these are the guys who are going for, and I've done that before, and it's an absolute, you know, it's, it's miserable finding the right guys for these, for these adventures.

And by the way, we have an all women's team that's going next year, and that's what's I'm really excited about is that I'm trying to prove to everybody out there that, that it's not me that's doing this, this process. Everything that you and I Dan, are talking about right now is part of the process of building and maintaining these great teams.

So we've got an all women's team that we just finished putting together actually a couple weeks ago, and we're bringing them in the journey, but now it's not me. You know, I'm not the one that's gonna be creating those gathering points out there on the water. So, um, they're gonna have to do it themselves.

So I could just help coach them in this situation, but in the end, I'm not rowing this with them. And that's, that's been a good, good kind of exercise for me to do, is to kind of step back and let this happen. But when you're out there, um, it doesn't have to be Grant. You know, like sometimes we're all scared.

We're in a bad situation. You might just be checking in with the guy right next to you, right behind you as we're Rome saying, you all right Dunkin? He goes, I'm all right. You know, I'm feeling this, I'm feeling that. All right. Why don't you just take five minutes to yourself like, I got you. Let me just ro for a second.

Something as small as that is, is to me, that's a gathering point, and that's just that building trips. Other times you've got a beautiful day, wind's at your back, sunny skies, you are dry, everyone's lap and having a good time. And you can have kind of these more robust gathering points, but, The fact is that you gotta be consistent with them.

And you're right. You, you, I think you nailed it, Dan. Like, to a certain extent, it does feel like a box that you have to check. But as long as that, as long as that in the moment, it doesn't feel that way. And I, I was once told by, by a mentor mine, which I, I've never, I've never forgotten, which is he said that, he said quality time is a myth.

And, um, it's not about quality time, it's about quantity. Time, quality time is only defined after you've already done it. Nope. You should never go into a situation saying, I want to make this the best weekend with my kids I've ever had. Or, I want to make this the best practice we've ever had. Or, you know, this is, you don't, you just simply show up for your children every single day without any kind of a hope or agenda other than I'm there for them.

And then the quality time is defined. Later on, you look back and say, wasn't that an amazing weekend? And it's amazing. Like, and I, I, as a father of a two year old, I haven't quite experienced this yet, but. It's amazing what I remember and talking to my dad, which were great moments in my childhood, he's like, God, I bar, I forgot about that time.

Well, it meant a lot to me. He didn't go in those situations. And I think that's the same thing when we're talking about how we're leading our organizations and we're trying to create this, this, this idea of, of, of high performance teams doing really special things in whatever industry you're on. It's, don't worry about going every day, just being the best leader, creating the best experience, just be consistent for them every day.

And that stuff will happen. And I really, I really take that to heart. And sometimes it's not easy to do, um, because sometimes consistency's harder than, than trying to be like an a plus every

Dan Ryan: hour. So, well, consistency I think is the key to so many things. But again, you could just be walking through. But to make it a meaningful gathering point, as you say, is pretty tremendous.

And we, I want to push back on you and one thing you said, you said it's not you. But if I, when I go back to the book, in reading about your experience with your coach at Sonoma State, which for those of you who know, like they have a, a decent program now, but on the West Coast, 10 or 15 years ago, it wasn't that big of a deal, but you went in it and you made your way to the Vesper, uh, boathouse, which is in Philadelphia, which is like, is it the premier rowing organization in America?

Yeah. Not one of, yeah. So, but your coach said to when he was trying to, in essence lobby, the Vesper coach, I forget their names. He said that you are the grittiest person, human that he's ever met. Like you're, it's almost like you're off the scale, off the charts on it. And that's why they should give you, not someone from Yale or Princeton.

Or Dartmouth, uh, a run at this. So even though you say it's not you, there's something really special about you with your grittiness. So my question is like two part, like where did that grittiness come from? And then as you're selecting and recruiting and maintaining your teams, how do you get everyone to tap into that grittiness?

Because most people

Jason Caldwell: are not like you. Yeah. I may like really did read my book. Dan, thank you so much. You're, you remind me of parts about it that I haven't thought about in a while, so I appreciate that. Um, yeah, I mean, I, where, first of all, answer that first one. Where did the grittiness come from? I mean, I, I, my answer will be one way.

I'm sure my, my parents would answer a different way and my coaches would answer a different way. But I think, you know, I grew up not being, I was a good athlete, but I was, I was never the best athlete. And I found early in, in my career that I could, my biggest talent was to, I could outlast. So there's endurance.

Um, you know, I grew up playing baseball and football and endurance. Um, He's good enough sports, but it isn't weighted as heavily as a, a sport like rowing. And so when I got into rowing, what I found is, you know, and by the way, at Vesper at, you know, six foot four, 215 pounds, I was the shortest and lightest guy on the team.

I mean, I'm small for elite level rowing. So when I get onto big teams like that, I knew that what I could do is I could outlast people. You know, I, I could, I could, I could, I could practice longer and harder. I, I, you know, I would do those kinds of things. And so moderns became the way that I made teams and then became the way that I made top boats.

Was that it, I was, I was always going to be the guy that was gonna be there for you. Take an extra practice with you if you needed extra strokes, if you needed go to the weight room with you, you know, the, I had, I had physical endurance, but I was also also somebody you could rely on for that. Like you could call me in the middle of the night because you were at a bar when you shouldn't have been out to begin with.

Cuz we had practice the next morning, coach, I'm down here, you know, in deep trouble and I'd go pick you up from that place. You know, like that type of, that be started to become my legacy. Jason Caldwell's legacy was he's there. Like he will always be there. He will never not be there. And that is how I have built on my success.

So that grittiness and that kind of, that idea that I'm just kind of, that kind of always gonna be there has, has voted well for me. So identifying that for me early on and then leveraging that is how I've gotten my success. There are many, many rowers in this country that are more technical savvy than me, that are bigger than me.

They're stronger than me, but I, I think you'll find, you'll be hard pressed to find one that'll last longer than me. And so that was it.

Dan Ryan: It's also interesting cuz now as you're saying that, it made me think of a part where it's, I think it was at Sonoma State, you were, you were kind of like the defacto leader of your team, but you were almost as if a dictator, right?

You'd gotta do this and you'd think less of people if they weren't working as hard or whatever. But then at Vesper there was this one guy who just won every seat race and a seat race. For those of you who don't know, you have usually two boats and you're always trying to tweak it and find out who's rowing on the best one.

But he won every single one he could not lose. And I feel like that was a real transformation in you. Tell us about that inter encounter with the guy who would win it all the time. How did you approach him? What were you feeling in that vulnerability? And then how did you

Jason Caldwell: change? Yeah, that's the thing is I, you know, you're right in that Sonoma state.

I come into Rome late in my, my collegiate career. I played baseball at Sonoma State, got injured, couldn't play anymore. Get into rowing late in the career, and I have a chip on my shoulder, you know, I feel like I'm too good for this sport. And then when I start to have success, if you didn't seem like you were working as hard as me in this very interdependent sport of rowing where we're all in the same boat, wasn't like pitching, um, you know, I would be upset with you.

And so I was like, I was given the captain role by the coach because I was the oldest guy on the team. I was the biggest guy on that team. But leadership is not a title. Leadership is inherently you asked to do so you don't have to be. And I was just the captain, but I wasn't the leader, you know? Um, and I think I learned the difference between that when I went over to Besser and God's spot there, they accept, uh, you know, 16 people from around the country.

I'm by far the least experienced, the smallest guy in a lot of ways. I have no business being there, but I get a kind of a one summer shot. I. And, um, another guy that was on the team, and his name's Don White Briggs from Dartmouth went to RO at Dartmouth, which is a great school, uh, especially for rowing.

But in terms of like the Ivy Leagues, like not the best, you know, the Princeton, Harvard jails were kind of the, the better schools. Um, he wasn't that big. Of course he was bigger than me because everybody was, but he wasn't, he wasn't the biggest guy. Didn't have the, he wasn't the fastest on the rowing machines, but this guy was in the stroke seat of the top boat and nobody could knock him off.

And the stroke seat of the top boat is like often considered, you are the best rower. You're the most productive rower. That's what I should say. Meaning you knew boats better than anybody else. And I noticed that he never got knocked off because in the seat racing thing that you kind of alluded to, whenever he'd be challenged by another rower, he would always beat the other guys in the sea races.

Never, ever lost. And so I'm thinking I'm gonna stay on this team if I'm gonna wanna get comfortable here in Philly. I gotta figure out what this guy does. He's obviously not the biggest guy, but he's the best in what he does. So, um, I find out, I talk to him, I kind of get to know him, buddy him up a little bit, and he just tells me that he really had kind of earned that trust that we talked about earlier with all the guys so that when he was put in somebody's boat, he wouldn't even row hard during those seat races.

He would actually let everybody else win it for them because everybody else in that boat felt they owed Don something. Maybe Don helped them out in some way the last week, or did something lo, you know, loaned his time, loaned a little extra cash to someone out, picked them up from somewhere, whatever it was.

Like he would give and give and give and give all the time of himself. And then when he was in the boat and now he needed something, he didn't even have to ask for it. Everybody was desperate to pay Don back. He didn't have to do anything but look behind him. And the boat said, all right guys, let's have a good five minute row right here.

And he said, all I did is row nice and easy, set the boat up, which balance the boat and let everybody else win the race for him. And that concept. What he did is he, he built this trust. He leveraged human emotion in a way that people, like I said before, with Tom and myself, people were more afraid of letting him down than they were about worrying about whether they were gonna be seat race.

Next one, were they gonna be too tired? Were they gonna wear themselves out winning for Don and then not be able to wink for themselves? They didn't even think that far ahead. All they knew was that Donna got in their boat I owed Don. That guy did mean solid last week, last month, whatever it was, and now I've gotta pay him back right now.

I mean, it's brilliant, brilliant, brilliant leadership. And if

Dan Ryan: you think about Don and how he was, like you said, now you're always there. You're there, you, Jason are there. Yep. Don was there for all of his teammates in so many other ways than, than just the task at hand. And that's what really struck me. And as we think about hospitality and making others feel comfortable, it's that service mentality.

Yeah. He knows if he's there showing up and giving for others, they will perform for him. And I think that this can translate into all of our lives in such an incredible way. Put others first, then you, you fill that karma pool and it comes back to you.

Jason Caldwell: Yeah. We hear this term servant leadership and it's become, unfortunately, it's become a cliche, um, because I think people say without really knowing what they're saying, they just know.

It's a nice little buzz phrase, but servant leadership is, is in my, there's a lot of ways to lead. It is, in my opinion, the best way to lead this idea that we're, I'm gonna serve owners all the time so that when I have to ask something of somebody else, not only are, they're not gonna say, Ugh, he's my boss.

I have to do this. He's gonna say, I want to do this. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to pay this thing back, to pay it forward, and that, and that, that is great. I mean, there was this moment in my second row where we broke the world record in the Atlantic. We get hit by the storm, you know, 500 miles away from the finish line.

We, we thought it was gonna be easy rowing through the last 500 miles, and we get hit by the storm, knocks us back, and we realize that basically after the storm, for the next five days to break the world record, we have to row 80 miles a day. Which by the way, is 10 miles above world record paces. I mean, 80 miles a day is just like, it's, it's unheard of.

Like to be able to do one or two in the course of the entire crossing is amazing enough, but we have to string five in a row. And when I, when I, you know, we just spent, granted, we spent a month together, you know, in this boat doing all these things that we've been talking about and, and before that, in the months leading up to it as we were training together.

So I came outta that can after doing the math right, saying, telling people. Telling my pret who were, you know, looking at me saying, Hey, what's the numbers? What do we have to do? And I remember, I remember having a little cry inside the cabinet before I came out because I was thinking to myself, man, we work too hard.

We, we deserve better than this. And I'm gonna have to tell 'em this bad news. And, and, and they deserve more than this. But once I collected myself, I went out there and I told 'em what we had to do, and the response wa was, was amazing. And the response was the first guy that talk that said, Matt Guy actually rode with that best report he run.

He goes, oh my God, thank God. He said, I thought you were gonna say a hundred miles. Like this guy truly believed that he was relieved. He believed that this team could do 80 miles a day. And everyone had similar responses. And so we told that, I told him, this is what we need to do. And they, they, they looked me at each other in the eye and said, all right.

And then we were all so committed for the next five days. We rode 79 miles, 94 miles, 92 miles, 88 miles, and broke the world record by about 13 hours, um, five days later. And nobody talked up to make the world record in those five days. Nobody said words like, meet me, me, or I, I, I. It was all about, What can I do for the person sitting next to me?

And, um, and, and how can, how can we, how can we get done these next five days the way that we do it? And it was just, even if we didn't break the world's record, I remember telling myself in my head, I just achieved it. Like I achieved the pinnacle of my athletic career. It, it is certainly the pinnacle of my, my leadership journey was I, I came on that cabinet with bad news that nobody took as bad news and they were desperate to be able to pay this back.

Not just to me, but to each other as well, to this team. It was just an amazing, amazing moment in my life that, um, I I, that really, that really high shaped the long lungs of who I am moving forward.

Dan Ryan: This idea of servant leadership as you were talking about it, it made me think of jfk and I'm in DC right now, um, near Arlington Cemetery and.

That whole idea of ask not what your country or team interchangeable can do for you, but what you can do for your country or team. I think it makes us all stronger and I feel like we've lost a lot of that. Mm-hmm.

Jason Caldwell: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I think that we live in a tumultuous world right now and you know, it's, it's ever changing and we feel anxiety and we feel uncertainty.

You know, we're all, we're all we're scared and that's okay to say that, but I think when we do, you have a choice. You can either, you can either go in on yourself and just basically say, Hey, look, I am only gonna take care of number one right now. This is where I am. Or you can look for opportunities to do two things, to help the ones that are less strong than you, and to lead in, ask for help for the ones that are stronger than you.

And that's what we do as a microcosm in these boats. Every time you do one of these crossings, you will numerous times be. The weakest person in the boat and the strongest. And when you're the weakest person in the boat, you've gotta be able to say, I'm not having a good day. This is what I need. And sometimes that need is something that I need you to do something for me.

I need you to, to, to, to, to cook a meal for me. I need you to take an extra 15 minutes of my shift. Uh, maybe it's, I just need to be by myself and be locked into my headphones right now and my music, because I, I just gotta get through this. Mm-hmm. And, and, and your teammates will understand and respect that about you.

And then when you're on the strongest part, you're like, I'm feeling great today. I, I've got good sleep. I've been eating well. My body has responded to everything that I've been doing for it. That's your opportunity to look around and be like, Who needs my help right now, who, who can use? And that's that servant summit right there.

That's that servant part of it. And you don't, again, we don't have to be, you don't have to be the skipper of the boat to be a leader in the team. You know, I was the captain of my Sonoma stick team that first year, but I certainly wasn't, wasn't being a leader. There was other people that were leading a lot better on that team than I was, um, without the little, without that, you know, the c on their chest.

And, um, that's the difference right there.

Dan Ryan: And it's reminding me how, whether you're the skipper or the captain, the c e o, whatever CC'd you want to be the president, okay? So you are a leader, but at the most important times, those leaders serve the ones that are around them and then need, need them the most.

Jason Caldwell: That's how they got there, you know? Yeah. That's how, I believe that's how they got there. I mean, I was just talking to a CEO of a financial institution, um, just last week and, and his entire, his entire messaging was about this idea that he is only there to serve everybody else. And, and, and Mike and I believed him too.

You know, it was, it was an amazing message that he, he continued almost, almost ad nauseum to be talking about. And, and it was just an amazing, it was just an amazing message that he had. He's like, I'm here for everybody else. Like, that's what I, that's my job as a c e o. And I thought that, you know, what an amazing thing to be telling everybody who's looking up to you to say is an eye there for you.

How can you, what do you need from me?

Dan Ryan: Another amazing thing, which really resonated with me, as you were saying, it was when you said you had to do 80 miles a day, and then you did 79 and then outperformed. I'm a big believer that. We're all big kids. We all have our own library cards and the clearer and more transparent that we can be with our teams and our clients and everyone around us, it allows us to make adjustments that we need to do to perform.

And just to hear that was very reassuring and I appreciate that. And the, you've talked about a couple of times throughout this of just this fear. Fear of death, exhausted, just being scared. What's keeping you up at night now?

Jason Caldwell: Yeah, I mean, I think that's a great question. Great question. And I think, you know, as somebody who, who owns a company that does leadership training courses, but we also do, I mean, I do these races.

Um, I live, I live in two very different worlds. I mean, I am a, I'm a husband and a father that lives in a small town in California. Very community oriented over here. Uh, you know, we love going to Farmer's Market. We've got a nice robust social life here. Um, it's quaint, it's quiet, it's predictable, and I love that.

And then when I leave here, I go and con mountains, trek deserts, run oceans, and do these incredibly dangerous things. So the juxtaposition between my two worlds, um, lends itself to keep me up in that for different reasons. I think on a personal level, you know, I kind of mentioned that I was a good athlete, but never the best on the team.

And I kind of always felt like I was destined for a wall of silver medals. And I think I. You know, I, I, I played baseball my whole life. Didn't, didn't go ProGo injured, didn't went to rowing, um, but didn't qualify for the Olympics. Um, then do my first ocean row. You know, I told you this story about breakfast with Tom and I, but the reality was we had two guys leave.

We didn't win the race. We didn't break a world record. Then I started changing things and things started working out, broke the world record the next year. Then I go off and do a bunch of other things. You know, now all of a sudden we've got this success, but I'm still, I'm, uh, you know, an insecure human being, like most of us.

And I wonder, is it a fluke? Am I getting lucky? Am I just going through this part? Like, am I really being the leader that I keep talking about? Um, and of course the reality is no, I'm not, because I'm constantly making mistakes. And, um, you know, I'm, I'm losing, you know, teammates and friendships because of disagreements that we've had.

And, you know, it's not perfect. We, you know, we. I'd like to say that I'm, I'm best friends with all on every single TV I've ever had. That's not the case. We, some of 'em have come, some have gone, some left on good terms, some not so good terms. And it, all of that adds up to like, can I be better? And, and am I just getting lucky?

You know? And I know it sounds weird coming from me, but that's how I feel. So what keeps me up at night is like, am I really this, the, the, the, the team captain and the leader that, that I, that I talked about? Or am i, am I just a facade? And that, that sounds harsh, but that I have to keep proving that to myself.

I will, you know, my next adventure will be next year and, and whatever I choose to do, like I, uh, I need to prove to myself that I, I'm gonna put together and lead that team the right way. So, you know, and then on, on a, on a, on a kind of professional team, um, you know, capacity where I'm with, with my, you know, with my business here, it's, it's really, you know, I, I, I hunt.

What I eat. You know, I, we, I don't, I don't, I work for myself and my family and my employees rely on the success of, of our, of our, uh, not only our ideas, but our ability to deliver on our ideas. Do they work? And so, you know, that gets me nervous. And, uh, I, you know, I, again, in my, am I doing everything I can for everybody in, in this office that it's gonna be, make sure that they get everything they want while the company's still doing what they need to do.

Dan Ryan: So I love that. And it also brings me to our shared love of baseball. You played at a much higher level than I did, but it was also something that we both shared with our dads. And for me it was that time where he was mine, I was his, it was, we were just there together. Um, I think for you, which comes down to the leadership, it's really showing up.

It's the repetitions. And I think every leader must deal with failure. And we're using, and why I love baseball so much is you fail 70% of the time you're still going to the Hall of Fame. But if you're having the reps and getting up there and, and doing the work and just showing up every day,

Jason Caldwell: you're gonna go somewhere.

Yeah. I couldn't agree more. And I, I'd be hard pressed at find kind of a particular moment in my childhood where my dad wasn't very far away and, you know, we can all be critical of our parents and those who raised us, they were too tough. They weren't tough enough. They did this for me. They didn't do that for me.

We've all got those stories, but I think the thing that we need to be looking at, what is, were they there? Were they there making those mistakes, learning as they go, just like we're learning as we go. You know, I've got a two year old son and I, you know, in the short two years that he is been alive. I mean, I'm just constantly making mistakes and, and I will continue to be, but I can tell you one thing that I have control over is that I will be there, you know, I will be consistent.

Matt moves forward as I, as I decide what I'm gonna do next, what adventures not stuff is now. Do I want to be away from my family for extended periods of time to go and chase down these, these dreams? I think there's, I think there's room for both, but those questions are a little tougher for me to answer.

They, um, you know, 10 years ago you told me to do something. I'm on a plane, I'm, I'm gonna do it. And I got married and was a little tougher. And then now I've got a kid that it's, it's e it's tougher still. So those types of, uh, but that, that idea of consistency showing up and, and quantity time is gonna be something that I'm gonna make sure that, that, that happens.

Dan Ryan: That quantity time, the repetition showing up, uh, you just said chasing down dreams and chasing and it's, it's really, I love how, I forget which where it is, but one of your last chapters, you have a quote from Hermann Melville and for Moby Dick, and it's like that white whale. So what's the, what's the white whale that you're chasing and what's exciting you most about the future?

Jason Caldwell: Well, um, I still, I always say, like, I always say, would the 10 year old Jason be proud of me today? You know, like the guy who doesn't care about money and, you know, the kid I should say that didn't care about money, but was building forts in the backyard and was, you know, was daydreaming. I was a big daydreamer.

I guess. I still am. And I always try to check in with him and just wonder, like, would, would he be proud of where we went? You know, where it's easy for us to make these like small concessions. And I'll, I, I kind of, without trying to give you too many of these little one-liners, um, you know, we hear, we hear this phrase and this idea.

And this, this is answering your question, I promise, but this idea that we hear, we say it all the time. We say life, life is short, and we, we will quote that life is short. And I actually disagree with that. I actually think that life is, is, is is long. In fact, whether it's short or long actually just kind of depends on what you're comparing it to.

But I think we believe that life is long more than we believe life is short. Because if we truly believe that life is short, we'd be going and doing everything that we've ever wanted to do. We, we, we, you know, we'd be. We'd be taking those, you know, piano lessons. We'd be learning that second language. We'd be asking that girl out at the coffee shop that we see come in every day that we wish we'd have an earth to do.

We'd be doing all these things because we are truly believed that life is short. I may not have another chance. Life is finite and it's fleeting. But I think the reality is that we all kind of have this deep seated belief that we'll always have more time. You know, we'll have a second chance, we'll, I'll, I'll do it next year when I'm not as busy.

I'll ask around next time she comes in when I'm wearing something a little nicer, whatever it is. And it, this, this, this deep seated belief that life is long, I think enables us to make these little tiny concessions throughout our, our life. And before we know, we look back at a certain age and we say, God, when did I give up on my dreams?

When did I give up on all this, all these things I was gonna do? Well, the reality is it wasn't one time you didn't just say, Hey. I'm gonna give it up now. You know, you just need small concessions cuz you always just said, Hey, we felt more time, we'll can do this later. I gotta take this, I gotta take this promotion now.

Yeah. It means that I'm probably not gonna be able to do these things, but I gotta take it now. We'll deal with those later. And you look back and you realize, wow, I've just made a, a number of concessions throughout the, you know, the last decade or two of my life and now I'm upset with myself and we're all guilty of that, myself included.

But what I try to do is really try to change the way I think about life and to really, really believe, not just say I do, but believe that life is sure. And, and, and to, to, to make decisions based on the fact that, that this could be the last time I'll even have the opportunity to say yes or no to this thing.

So if you say, what is the next thing for me? Like I will always do these adventures. Like this is for me is important. Um, I think maybe I'm largely done with oceans, but I I, I've been looking to, you know, the world's greatest rivers and being able to navigate those and, and so, Those will always be a part of my life when I've created a world around in my community where not only am I supporting these things, but, you know, know my wife.

She's, she's, she's my, my bigot support, but she's also, somebody help pushes me in that direction to make sure that I'm doing the things I need to do to get ready for that next one. So those, I'll always be, hopefully trying to make that 10 year old self happy, because there's this situation where we encourage 10 year olds to dream.

You wanna be an astronaut? You can be one. Then all of a sudden they turn to certain age, and then we think that these same things are ridiculous. Like, why would a 38 year old wanna still be an astronaut? Well, that's too bad because maybe he is gonna have a harder time at 38 than he would at 10. But like, it's really unfortunate that, that we place these kind of restrictions on people when they get to bes, like, go get a job.

So anyway, that's a long diet tribe, but I, I, I hope that that resonates with people. Well,

Dan Ryan: I, I love the image of the 10 year old Jason, because to think about that net your dad built in the backyard with the T-ball and the 120 balls you're hitting every day. Like that's the repetition, that's the work, that's the showing up, right?

Yeah. And you're gonna fail, but you're doing it. So if you could go, you right now, Jason, stand in front of your 10 year old self by the bucket of balls and the t what advice do you give your 10

Jason Caldwell: year old self first? I'd say, you know, you gotta tie your shoes more because I feel like everything I see every picture is my shoes aren't tied, so we gotta tie the shoes more often.

That'll be the first thing I'd say. But, you know, um, I guess if I were to, if I were to be able to place him and he would be able to listen to me this way, I would really encourage him to like, Understand the difference between like and love and the difference between enjoying something and being passionate about something.

And I think one of the things with baseball, and Dan, I do love baseball. I've been a fan of it my whole life with as, as a sounding track in my entire childhood Giants games on the radio, in my garage and on tv, in the family room. Um, season tickets of my dad at Candlestick Park, this miserable, miserable, freezing piece of concrete.

Um, but I think I, I, I thought I loved baseball, but I, I really, I loved my dad and he loved baseball. It's truly a passion for him. When I found out, when I started rowing, I, I really learned what love was and it's been easy. It hasn't been worked for me. I love giving in votes and I love the fluid dynamics and I love the team element of rowing.

And that was the first time I think I really understood was when I was in college, this, this, oh my gosh, this is what love is. So not to say that he shouldn't have. 10 year old Jason shouldn't continue to pursue baseball from there on out, but I would just wanted him to explore more opportunities so that he could figure out the difference between one thing and the other.

I think I, one of the things I, I fear in this, where we are now is that kids are just, you know, it's so competitive. They're, they're constantly pressured to do the same sport year round. And then you gotta get a semi-professional coach teaching you how to swing and throw a ball and, oh my gosh, you're not tall enough, so now you gotta get bigger.

Let's get 'em weight classes. And somebody can say, I just wish that we could explore different sports, try different things, try cooking classes, try magic for I, oh, I care. You'll do whatever you want so that you can, it's not, so you can just find what you're good at so you can find what love is and like is, and what kind of love is, and what passion is and what hatred is, and be able to create a scale, you know, a spectrum of, of, of passions.

And, um, How would I fill all that into a 10 year old Jason who's probably already lost interest on what I've said by now? I don't know. I'd have to say it a better way than I just said it to you, but that's what I'd be trying to talk. You're just like, tie your fucking shoe. Exactly. Well, I don't know why every single home video and I'm my shoes, I'm tired.

It's like I should have gotten Velcro. Did I not know what tie my shoes? I'm worth it.

Dan Ryan: It's funny, uh, my 13 year old daughter, I, I think I may have shared this with you, but she's very athletic. She's awesome. She's creative, she does all these things. But whenever I ask her, oh, why don't you try running? Why don't you try this?

It's always, no, no, no, no. The one thing I said, I was like, don't, like there's this big rowing club near where we live, and she's like, I wanna try rowing. I was like, you know, you might wanna wait till you're a little bit older because it's pretty hard on your body, especially as a youngster. And you know what?

She loves it. She's doing it. And it's because I said, Probably not the best idea. Yeah,

Jason Caldwell: exactly. Reverse psychology. Nice job, Dan. I know. Don't do that. Don't eat your vegetables. So, yeah.

Dan Ryan: Yeah. Good. Awesome. Well, Jason, I mean this has been so incredible. Um, I thank you so much. Where can people find you? And we'll have all this in the show notes as well, but just give us a rundown.

Jason Caldwell: Cool. I mean, yeah, first of all, be to you Dan. I really appreciate this was, I cannot believe how fast that time just went by, but, um, you know, uh, finding me on Instagram at Jason underscore TCO Caldwell, just search Jason Caldwell, you'll find me, um, is a great way to follow my adventures and see cool pictures of what I'm doing and where I'm traveling.

Uh, you can always catch me on LinkedIn too, on the, on the business side of things. And, um, I'm always trying to post my thoughts and some articles in there and, and more of my kind of what we've been talking about today. So those are great ways to find me.

Dan Ryan: Awesome. Uh, well I want to thank you very much for your time cuz this did go by so quickly, but like, I loved it.

Jason Caldwell: That was great. I didn't you you're, you're awesome. Thank you for coming up to me and, uh, telling me, Hey, you should be on my podcast. And, uh, and making me see where the connection is. And, uh, I got, I got an education, um, over this last couple months and, and kind of just talking with you. So thank you very much.

Dan Ryan: Well, you're very welcome, Jason. And this whole idea of gathering points I think is really important to everyone in every aspect of our lives. And if this podcast has helped you think differently about delivering or receiving hospitality or being a servant leader, please let me know about it, share the podcast with others, and share it with a friend.

And thank you everyone, and we'll see you next time.